USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

In-Depth Analysis: The New York Times, Washington Post & LA Times

For
many years, we have published in-depth analyses that show the
consistent and pervasive anti-Israel bias of the New York Times. Check
out the reports here, here, and here. We even awarded the NY Times our “Dishonest Reporter” award for the most biased reporting of 2013.We have documented how the vast majority of articles and
editorials in the NY Times depict Israel in an unfavorable and often
erroneous way. Yet the NY Times might argue that its coverage
is negative because Israel’s actions and policies warrant such coverage.
In other words, it would claim to be simply reporting the news rather
than presenting a biased viewpoint.

So we decided to compare the NY Times’ coverage to that of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. If coverage of Israel by all three papers was close, then perhaps the NY Times’ argument would have merit.
On the other hand, if the NY Times presented a different picture of
Israel than the other papers, it would add to the evidence that it
reports from a biased, anti-Israel perspective. How else could one
explain that the NY Times covers Israel differently to other sources
reporting on the same events?
So what did we find?In every category we measured, the coverage of Israel by the
New York Times was far worse than that of the LA Times and Washington
Post. Again, this is analyzing coverage of the same events in
the same time period (January-February 2014.) We looked at four
categories of bias: Fairness, Context, Terminology, and Selection of
Sources. Some of the bias is very subtle, but when readers absorb news
that is written in a bias way, it can’t help but impact the way they
understand events.
Just one example paints the picture. We looked at what we refer to as
“fairness.” By that, we mean what percentage of the articles concerned
subjects that reflected negatively on Israel.
While only one quarter of the Washington Post articles and one third of those in the LA Times reflected negatively on Israel, an overwhelming 67% of articles in the New York Times did so.
Other metrics we measured showed similar discrepancies.
Findings Explained:

Fairness:

Percentage of articles that expressed criticism of Israel or depicted Israeli actions in a negative light.(Note:
The Washington Post also published stories from the Associated Press
that tend to provide a more negative view of Israel. They are not
included in this study. We used only articles from the Post’s own
reporters.)
In any media outlet’s reports on Israel, there will be some negative
and critical stories. That’s to be expected since Israel, like all
Western countries, is not perfect. However, there is no reason why
negative stories should overwhelm all other coverage. They don’t in the
LA Times or the Washington Post. Yet reporting on the same facts and the
same events, the New York Times finds a way to report negatively on
Israel two-thirds of the time.
For example, on January 10, the New York Times published “In Blow to Peace Efforts, Israel Publishes Plans for New Housing in Settlements.”
Not only is the Israeli announcement labeled a “Blow to Peace Efforts”
in the headline, but the article opens by referring to “a move the chief Palestinian negotiator condemned as a “slap” to Secretary of State John Kerry’s intense push for a Middle East peace deal.”
Before the reader can actually get to the details, the Israeli
announcement has been qualified in both the headline and the first
paragraph.
The same day, the LA Times published an article on the same issue with the headline simply stating that “Israel announces more settlement construction.” The article opens and describes how the move drew criticism but was expected. The Washington Post had
a similarly neutral headline. The Post did mention the “slap”
reference, but only in the fifth paragraph. It is only the New York
Times that elevates the quotation by Saeb Erekat
to the first description of the Israeli policy. The way the NY Times
reported on the Israeli announcement was far from an objective survey of
the facts – it condemned Israel by using an opinion on settlements as a
factual analysis.
Then there is the issue of opinion pieces. In the New York Times, 88%
of the op-eds were critical of Israel. Most of the opinion pieces in
the LA Times and Washington Post were either neutral or positive.
Examples of opinion pieces critical of Israel or Israeli actions or
leaders include “Israel Needs to Learn Some Manners,” “How Israel is Losing the Propaganda War,” and “The Third Intifada”
(justifying the boycott movement.) The NY Times employs regular
columnists like Tom Friedman who has shown a history of one-sided
criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority.

Context:

Percentage of stories lacking important context that can explain Israeli actions.
The situation in the Middle East is complicated. When important
context is left out, readers can get a biased view of what’s happening
and what Israel is doing. In an article that mentions Jerusalem, stating “which Israel conquered in 1967″
is not enough. This neglects to mention the city’s thousands of years
of Jewish history or any context to the 1967 war – a war of defense that
ended with Israel in control of Jerusalem. Implying that Israel is a
“conqueror” lacks such context.
Settlements should not simply be labeled as “illegal under international law” without the acknowledgement that there is a wide range of opinion on this issue.
Likewise, in reporting on the Palestinian education system, to
neglect to mention the specific, documented cases of anti-Israel
incitement and glorification of terrorists in Palestinian schools would
be to leave out critical context. Some Palestinian schools are even
named after terrorists and there are murals honoring terror that
Palestinian children are exposed to every day.
Yet, in “For Arabs in Israel, Curriculum Choice is Politically Charged,”
the NY Times glosses over this information and instead uses quotations
from Arabs stating how important it is to them that the Palestinian
“narrative” be taught in school. They turn the story of Israeli funding
for schools to use a standard curriculum into a conspiracy. One person
interviewed says:“I don’t want my son to be afraid to say he’s Palestinian.”Another Palestinian says:“The Israeli authorities “don’t only want to occupy the land,
they want to occupy the minds of the people — like a brainwashing.”
There is no way that readers will be able to understand the
curriculum debate when presented only with these types of opinion
without reference to the history of anti-Israel incitement in
Palestinian schools.
In “Abbas, Talking to Israeli Students About Peace, Finds a Receptive Audience,” Mahmoud Abbas
is treated as a moderate leader willing to make serious compromises in
the name of peace. While it has been well documented that Abbas has made
fiery speeches in Arabic that contradict the image the NY Times paints,
the article simply notes:

Batting away accusations by some Israelis
that he says one thing in Arabic and another in English, Mr. Abbas
said, “I speak the same language with everyone.” (Mr. Abbas addressed
the students in Arabic; simultaneous translations in Hebrew and English
were provided.)

But that statement has been proven to be false time and again. Why should the NY Times allow it to stand unchallenged?

Erik Prince is back with book defending Blackwater's role in war on terror

Erik Prince has authored a new book defending Blackwater, the private security firm he created in 1997.Courtesy image

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – After being vilified as the mercenary founder of
Blackwater, Holland native Erik Prince is telling his side of the story
in a new book titled, “Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.”
“For years my company’s work was misconstrued and misrepresented,”
the 44-year-old former Navy SEAL wrote in the introduction to the book.
“So now I’m done keeping quiet.
“What’s been said before is only half the story—and I won’t sit idly
by while the bureaucrats go after me so that everyone else can just go
back to business as usual,” wrote Prince, the son of philanthropist Elsa Prince Broekhuizen and brother of conservative West Michigan political activist Betsy DeVos.
“The true history of Blackwater is exhilarating, rewarding,
exasperating, and tragic,” wrote Prince, who has published his book
through Penguin Canada Books, Inc. three years after selling Blackwater
Worldwide.In an interview with ABC New’s “Sunday Spotlight,” Prince blamed his company’s image problems on the “anti-war left” who opposed the Vietnam War.
“This time they went after the contractors. Blackwater was a very
easy whipping boy for them,” Prince told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an
interview “This Week.”
Acknowledging that civilians may have been killed by Blackwater’s
security forces in Iraq, Prince told Raddatz “my greatest regret was
going to work for the State Department.”In an interview with “The Daily Beast” published Monday, Nov. 19,
Prince said he is focusing his business on expanding markets in Africa
and said he will never work for the U.S. government again.
Prince launched Blackwater in North Carolina in 1997 and was awarded
no-bid security contracts from the U.S. government at the beginning of
the Iraq War.
Blackwater became the focus of international scrutiny and ongoing
legal action when guards were involved in a series of high-profile
shootings in Iraq.
The company is now called Xe Services LLC after a group of investors bought the company from Prince in 2010.
Last year, the security firm agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to resolve allegations that it smuggled arms, among other crimes.Click here to read an excerpt from Prince's book.
RELATED: Blackwater founder Erik Prince writes memoir to counter security firm's controversial image